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Artillery Flyers at War
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Artillery Flyers at War
A History of the 664, 665, and 666 ‘Air Observation Post’ Squadrons of the Royal Canadian Air Force
by Darrell Knight
A Merriam Press Original Publication
Military Monograph MM82
From the book's Preface:
Viscount Torrington School was where I began my formal education in September of 1963. Our town was far removed from libraries and the great halls of learning, and the budget to maintain a collection in the school library was spartan. Reference and general interest books were housed in a tiny, windowless room, filled to the ceiling with shelves of dusty, dated volumes. None of the titles in that little room dealt with the Canadian military contribution to the South African conflict, two world wars, or the Korean ‘emergency.’ My lessons began in an era that predated personal computers; the most exciting mechanical aid in our school was one electric typewriter in the Principal’s office. Blackberries, I-Pods and cell telephones had not yet been invented. Often, as a result of frequent power outages, one of the teachers would walk the halls of our school, ringing a hand-held bell to signal the beginning or end of class periods.
On my first day in Ada Dundas’s grade one classroom my seat-mate, Jim Neufeld, spoke of his father’s service with the Winnipeg Grenadiers, particularly the circumstance of the senior Neufeld’s capture by the Japanese invasion force that overwhelmed the colony of Hong Kong in December, 1941. Frank Neufeld was subjected to three and one-half years of unspeakable torture and deprivation, orchestrated by the Government of Japan. I remember returning home to our family farm late that September afternoon in 1963 and asking my father what Japs were. It was a story I never forgot, punctuated by a later awareness that the Canadian Government largely ignored the plight of its Hong Kong Veterans, eventually paying the vets special compensation after most of the survivors had died from premature old age and a litany of medical complications caused by their wartime experiences.
The Winter family farmed three miles west of our farm. The family patriarch, ‘Mac’ Winter, had been a member of the famed assault force at Dieppe, France, staged on the morning of August 19, 1942. Later in the war, Mac fought in the Italian campaign with the Fourteenth Armored Regiment, better known to Albertans as the famous Calgary Tanks…the unit now perpetuated in memory by the King’s Own Calgary Regiment. During one of my many visits to the Winter home, I was allowed to leaf through a scrapbook of Calgary Herald newspaper clippings Mac’s mother had saved during the war, illuminating a reporter’s history of the Calgary Tank Regiment fighting in Sicily and Italy during World War Two. I knew of no reference, however, which had been written of my father’s fighting history or of the contribution made by Canada’s ‘artillery flyers’ in World War Two.
Dad seldom spoke of his experience in the war but when he did, the conversation revolved around Captain Ray Irwin. Captain Irwin was my father’s pilot, the obscure hero who brought him safely back to base after flying missions in Europe’s war-torn skies. Crewing together, artillery Captain and rear-seat observer directed artillery fire onto ‘hot’ enemy targets, engaging their foe while directing and observing from their stalwart little aircraft, a Canadian-issue Mark V Taylorcraft Auster. These flyers were aircrew members of ‘B’ Flight, 665 Air Observation Post Squadron, Royal Canadian Air Force. Initially, I found it confusing that Irwin and Dad were both members of the Royal Canadian Artillery, but flew as aircrew in an RCAF Squadron. I took it on faith that I wasn’t having my leg pulled, however, and that everything related to me was as accurate as my father’s memory would allow. Through many years of searching, I could find no information about the Canadian AOP, no written evidence that any RCAF squadrons in the ‘six hundred’ series had existed, and no mention in any history, anywhere, of Captain Ray Irwin or of the other seventy-eight Canadian artillery pilots trained to fly in England during the Second World War. In later years, reputable RCAF historians I met and broached the subject to all drew blank looks, particularly when I mentioned the Taylorcraft Auster aircraft (never heard of the Auster, they said), and 665 (AOP) Squadron, RCAF (surely you’re referring to an RAF squadron, they declared emphatically). It seemed a foregone conclusion that the powers-that-be in the Canadian military had failed to write a history of the AOP and pass it along to the ‘experts’…or the history had simply been allowed to fade quietly.
Pursuing information about Canada’s AOP squadrons became an obsession while hunting for the day-to-day written records and flight logs and photographs of this obscure group of war-time flyers, virtually all of the aircrew having been seconded from His Majesty’s Royal Regiment of Canadian Artillery, and all of its riggers, fitters and instrumentation mechanics having previously serviced Lancasters, Halifaxs, Hurricanes and Spitfires while wearing the blue of the Royal Canadian Air Force.
In time, a rich harvest of evidence surfaced.
The Canadian AOP did, indeed, have its day in the sun, and was one of the proofs of this country’s determination to shake off the fetters of a Mother country.
In June 1944, the second last year of the Second World War, the Canadian Parliamentary War Cabinet authorized expenditures for the creation of three Air Observation Post squadrons. These distinct fighting units were formed to direct artillery fire in close combat against the German forces in the European Theatre of Operations. The Canadian Army in Italy had long depended upon aerial artillery direction from British AOP squadrons, but the time had come to ensure that a Canadian AOP formation was created, a small step toward complete military autonomy.
An AOP-trained pilot holding the rank of Major in the Royal Regiment of Canadian Artillery—not airforce personnel—commanded each of the three RCAF AOP squadrons. Every pilot assigned to duty in the three squadrons—664 (AOP), 665 (AOP) and 666 (AOP)—was a Canadian artillery officer (or, in a few instances, a British artillery officer) whose previous employment had been in Field, Medium, or Light Anti-Aircraft regiments, serving as a Gun Position Officer (GPO) or Forward Observation Officer (FOO), tasked with laying and firing artillery guns in support of Canadian or Allied fighting units, most often for the Infantry.
The officers chosen to fly in the Canadian AOP were not professional soldiers. Many had joined the Canadian Army in 1939 from the ranks of civilian lawyers, political scientists, accountants and other sundry professions and occupations. After the war, all became reasonably successful; one would become famous in television and in Hollywood film, responsible for the coining of a ‘catch-phrase’ that became known to millions: ‘Beam me up, Scotty.’ The ashes of that Canadian artillery flyer, James Doohan, would eventually be sent into space on a private rocket.
The minutia woven through the following history relates to a host of combatants, with special focus on Captain Ray Irwin, RCA; Captain Bev Baily, RCA; and Gunner Ray Knight, RCA—my father—all having fought as Auster aircrew members in 665 (AOP) Squadron, RCAF. The details of this book relate to Canadians who were selected for, trained, and thereafter became members of a squadron sent into battle…from the seasoned veteran artillery officer who fought and survived the carnage of Italy and who later earned army pilot’s wings in England, to the conscripted Bofors gunner defending Canada’s coastline who signed up for voluntary service overseas, thereafter to be sent into battle in Holland, Belgium, France, and Germany. They have remained Canada’s ‘nearly-forgotten’ aircrew of World War Two, young boys who went into action in wood, canvas, and tube-frame aircraft, boys who had carved models of Sopwith Camels, had read the stories of Billy Bishop and Raymond Collishaw, and were determined to close with and conquer their enemy in the air, as their predecessors had in World War One.
This book is an acknowledgement and special thanks for the contribution made to the fighting and winning of the Second World War by members of the AOP squadrons of the Royal Canadian Air Force, where artillery gunner and airman from two distinctly different services worked together toward a common end, while serving harmoniously in a unified, ‘hybrid’ military unit, in an act of nation building a generation before Canada’s government attempted unification of the Canadian Forces on a grand scale. May their dedication to duty, their personal sacrifice, and lack of recognition for their accomplishments by their countrymen be remembered for all time.
From the time of their unit’s inception to the cessation of hostilities in Europe and the subsequent disbandment of the squadrons, members of 664, 665, and 666 Squadrons almost unanimously referred to themselves as serving or having served in the AOP; later-day historians would, in time, refer to this branch of the service by the British referent, the ‘Air OP’ For the sake of historical consistency, all references to the squadrons herein remain as the Canadian members themselves knew of their organization during the war. To further add to the confusion and mystery of their background and training, only one of the men who became a pilot in the Canadian AOP received his training under the aegis of the British Commonwealth Air Training Plan in Canada, perhaps another reason for their history being an almost-forgotten footnote of World War Two, from the Canadian perspective.
This book is their story.
Contents
- Preface
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Chapter 1: Wormhout Advanced Landing Ground, Dunkirk, France. Monday, May 7, 1945
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Chapter 2: The Beginning of a Modern Air Observation Force
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Chapter 3: The Evolution of Purpose-Built Aircraft
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Chapter 4: The Continuing Development of D Flight
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Chapter 5: A Young Canadian, Off to War
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Chapter 6: The Founding Father of the Canadian AOP
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Chapter 7: Artillery Officers to 22 EFTS
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Chapter 8: Mastering the Auster
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Chapter 9: Operational Training for War
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Chapter 10: New Formations
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Chapter 11: Directing Shoots, with Deadly Effect
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Chapter 12: Aircraft Type Conversion
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Chapter 13: 665 (AOP) Squadron, RCAF
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Chapter 14: AOP Finishing School
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Chapter 15: Wings
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Chapter 16: Creating AOP Observers
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Chapter 17: Forming a Flying Crew
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Chapter 18: Deployment
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Chapter 19: ‘Dicing About’ Over Holland
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Chapter 20: Off to War
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Chapter 21: 666 (AOP) Squadron, RCAF
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Chapter 22: ‘Hello, Niner-Six!’
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Chapter 23: The Last Canadian Action in Europe
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Chapter 24: Post-War AOP Duties
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Chapter 25: Flying The Red Ensign, At Allied Headquarters
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Chapter 26: Training To Fly On Post-War Taskings
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Chapter 27: Intelligence Sorties In Germany
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Chapter 28: ‘We’re Here, Because We’re Here, Because…'
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Chapter 29: Final Orders
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Epilogue
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Photos and Documents
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Acknowledgments
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Glossary of Terms
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Appendix 1: Codes for Flight Training Procedures
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Appendix 2: Pilot’s Checklist, Auster Mk. IV and V Aircraft
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Appendix 3: Nominal Roll for Canadian Air Observation Post Squadrons
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Appendix 4: Nominal Roll of All British and Commonwealth Air Observation Post Pilots Trained for World War II
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Bibliography
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Index
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Author Darrell Knight
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